The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan told NBC News on Wednesday that a Florida church’s plan to burn the Quran this weekend would fuel anti-U.S. hatred rivaling the backlash against the infamous photographs of U.S. abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

In an interview airing later Wednesday on “NBC Nightly News,” Gen. David Petraeus warned that video of the demonstration would be a propaganda gift for anti-U.S. “extremists.”

“We’re concerned that the images from the burning of a Qoran would be used in the same way that extremists used images from Abu Ghraib — that they would in a sense be indelible,” Petraeus told NBC’s Brian Williams. “They would be used by those who wish us ill, to incite violence and to enflame public opinion against us and against our mission here in Afghanistan, as well as our missions undoubtedly around the world.”

The minister organizing the book burning, the Rev. Terry Jones, pastor of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., said he was taking account of widespread criticism from Petraeus and many others, but he insisted that he would not be dissuaded.

“Our burning of the Quran is to call attention to the fact that something is wrong,” Jones said at a news conference shortly after msnbc TV aired Petraeus’ comments Wednesday. “We have no intention of canceling.”

Video: Pastor: ‘We want to send a real clear message’ Read more at www.msnbc.msn.com

The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs. Examples of places that are traditionally considered public are streets, sidewalks, and public parks.(more). Read more at carlosmiller.com

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But she is dodging the most volatile and important issue to the conservative base in the southwestern U.S.: immigration. While other Republican governors are racing to copy Arizona’s toughest-in-the-country immigration law, Martinez has expressed only tepid support for it. While Republicans in Washington want to reopen debate on birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, Martinez opposes changing the amendment.

She insists that the Arizona law is a public safety issue and not a political one.

“Susana Martinez believes that states have every right to check the immigration status of someone that has been arrested of a crime,” campaign manager Ryan Cangiolisi told POLITICO.

But the Arizona law allows officers to detain and check the immigration status of people who haven’t been arrested — leaving the Martinez statement well short of an outright endorsement of the law. Read more at www.politico.com

In the past few weeks, amidst the consequences of the of the Gulf Coast oil catastrophe, the storming and murder of unarmed aid activists in the aid flotilla by Israeli commandos, and the continuing financial crises that have mounted from sub-primes to a full fledged sovereign debt crisis that’s wiping out countries, an innocuous religious center has taken the attention of the country away in a manner reminiscent of the worst of the McCarthy era. The outright demagoguery, vilifying, and demonization has taken to the airwaves, television, and the Internet in a manner which no longer alarms the astute, but demolishes the foundation of what makes us Americans via a new, publicly visible referendum. I’m not going to address the constitutionality 1 of the New York City (NYC) Sufi Islamic community center, nor am I going to rebuff the demagogues with the facts2 pertaining to the Sufi3 Muslims, Sufi Imam Rauf4, or about the positive contribution of this community to NYC and our country5 before the well known islamaphobe and incendiary Pamela Geller7 turned a community center with a pool, basketball court, and culinary center,6 into a divisive political football. The reason why is because so many other brilliant, intelligent, well read and researched writers have already written about this. In addition, in a willfully ignorant populace that distinguishes between Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Christian Scientist, Mormon and Jehovah’s witness as different, yet in a hypocritical double standard, refuses to acknowledge that Islam, just like Christianity, is composed of vastly differing sects with the same breadth and scope in variety of views, like Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Ahmadiyya, Wahabbist and Salafi, among others, it makes no sense to beleager this point on those who choose ignorance. Besides, other’s are doing a better job of this than I can. I am going to expose the brilliant tactics that the Neo-con co-opted republican and Tea Party, which I’ll refer to as Neo-cons 2.0, is employing to avenge their policy defeat in the presidential elections of 2008, highlight their opportunism to enforce a neo-fascist agenda, and reveal their primary goal: the destruction of the Constitution and Bill of Rights via public referendum displays, because those two documents block their efforts to create a fascist state to advance their Project for a New American Century, the Pax America Imperium. By now, the politically astute recognize that the Neo-cons chose the Constitution as its target for destruction, because a democratic republic is at odds with a worldwide military Imperium.8 A public assault on the first amendment on the freedom of speech and religious expression via the issue of the Sufi community center in NYC creates a visible public referendum on the first amendment. This is the danger of this issue. Along those lines, proposed mosques and Islamic community centers all across the country, none of whom have any connection, at all, to terrorism, or even the Wahabbist sect9, a sect which is the primary source for extremism, are under fire, attack, terrorism, and harassment as in the case of the recent bombing of a Florida mosque, while the mainstream media silence presents their overt stance and, I might add, collusion with the Neo-con agenda. 10, 11 In addition, the Arizona racial profiling law, and the efforts by multiple states across the country12 to put these exact same laws into practice, is an attack against amendments four and fourteen regarding search without a warrant, and breach of civil rights. And finally there’s the attack on the fourteenth amendment, against a native born American’s right to citizenship. 13 It’s a cultural war with military, civil, and worldwide implications, and at its core, it’s a nationalist, fascist, trotskyite war against the foundations of America. It’s nationalism only for those who fit in the definition of what an elite, fluidly changing, biased group describes as “American.” It’s a Trotskyite war, for a revolution against the Constitution, and for forced revolution against all peoples worldwide, via the generous use of military power and coercion, where the ends justifies the means, to force American “values” at the point of a gun, but mostly to maintain and extend American corporate interests.8 In short, the return of the Neo-con faction is in an all out assault against the foundations of our country, the two things which make the United States of America unique in the world, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These two documents are all that separates us from every other two bit nation in the world. This is what makes us Americans, and it’s under attack, not just by the Neo-cons, senators and representatives of the right wing, but by an unruly, functionally illiterate, and emotionally unstable mob that won’t stop to think and reason. Read more at www.infowars.com